blackshama's commentary on Philippine issues

The Philippine Daily Inquirer writes an op ed Sodden welcome about the La Nina enhanced Easterlies that have been wrecking havoc on the eastern seaboards of the region even into Australia. Queensland, Australia is now experiencing floods which its non-believer Prime Minister Julia Gillard described as of "biblical proportions" Gillard has personally seen the disaster which now has shut down Brisbane. While the Sydneysiders and Melburnians are hundreds of kilometres from the flood zone, all my mates from those cities don't think they won't get flooded. They are concerned. The PDI complains that the Manila-centric Noynoy administration has not shown the requisite urgency in dealing with the matter. Mr Noynoy Aquino has yet to set foot or fly over flood stricken Southern Leyte or even in nearer Albay. If he had, the press didn't get wind of it and neither have we seen the press photos. Mrs Arroyo steps into a disaster zone, I think it is Malacanang P...

SIYENTISTA NG MASA ! This is the what friends from the media and communication departments of some colleges told me. Thanks to the media, unassuming and inoffensive weatherman Dr Prisco Nilo has become not just a government scientist but the scientist of the masses! Now the tibak profs of the UP College of Science could only dream of this "canonization" on their heads. :-) We have nothing to thank but P-Noy for sacking him and making him a "martyr"! It all started when ABS CBN described his dwelling as "payak" or poor and humble. This is quite archaic Tagalog and is rarely used outside the context of priestly sermons and the St Luke's Gospel narrative during the Christmas Eve Mass. Ang sabsaban ni Jesus ay payak! Remember? Cardinal Dency Rosales of Manila is fond of using the word. My Mom who is a true blue Tagala says that the word means more than poor but downtrodden and oppressed like how Joseph and Mary were by Herod and the Romans. And since s...

The Philippine science community is surely pissed off by the decision of President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino's decision to relieve Dr Prisco Nilo of his directorship of PAGASA. Mr Aquino axed Dr Nilo for wrongly forecasting tropical storm Basyang's path. However, Mother Nature cannot be made to obey the bureaucracy nor political whim. She has no accountability! This is something that Mr Aquino [or at least his science advisors] never got the wind about. [Pun intended!] Weather forecasting is simply that a forecast. It is subject to uncertainty. Weather and climate information are provided by weather stations and the hundreds of ships and planes that ply the world's trade routes. The information is included in forecast models and synoptic models. The book shown in the photo is written in English that is geared for grade 6 -7 students and tell how meteorologists do their science. It was written in the days before global warming and yet the authors hinted then it WILL...

Typhoon Conson (Basyang) was a relatively weak typhoon with a small circulation. I have followed the cyclone's development from a weak low pressure area near Yap island to its intensification in the Philippine Sea as a category 1 typhoon. It got most of its steam from the deep and warm waters of the Philippine Sea. What I found very unusual is that one of the first storms of the season followed an almost westerly track. Check out the maybagyo.com forecast scenarios. Typhoons that follow this route usually do so late into the season in October and November. The reason given by meteorologists is that there was a strong high pressure steering ridge in southern China. Usually northwest Pacific typhoons swerve and take a curving path towards northern Luzon, Taiwan and Southern Japan during July. So Conson made a beeline for Metro Manila and by the time it passed over the city. it had a maximum wind speed of 95 km/hr with gusts of 110 km/hr. This made it as a tropical storm rather tha...